Drone Charging Stations on Telecom Towers with Series-Stacked Capacitive Differential Wireless Power Transfer

• Published in: 2024 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC) pp. 1166 - 1173
• Main Authors: Liao, Mian, Sen, Tanuj, Elasser, Youssef, Al Hassan, Hashim, Pigney, Andrew, Knapp, Edward, Chen, Minjie
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 25.02.2024
• Subjects: Autonomous aerial vehicles; capacitive wireless power transfer; Charging stations; Couplings; differential power processing; Gears; multi-port converter; Poles and towers; Wireless communication; Wireless power transfer; wireless UAV charging
• ISSN: 2470-6647
• DOI: 10.1109/APEC48139.2024.10509159

This paper presents a novel differential wireless power transfer (DWPT) architecture with a hybrid switched-capacitor (SC) differential power balancing circuit for charging arrays of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on telecom towers. An SC-based ladder differential power processing (DPP) converter is utilized to regulate the voltages of multiple series-stacked wireless charging modules from a high-voltage DC bus. The switches of the DPP circuit are reused as an inverter in a capacitive power transfer (CPT) system with a double-sided LC-compensation network, featuring reduced semiconductor component count and device stress. The capacitive coupling plates are integrated into landing platforms and UAV landing gears for high coupling capacitance and minimum influence on aerodynamics. An experimental prototype and related design considerations are presented to achieve high efficiency and ensure robust performance against misalignments. The DWPT architecture is verified through an 8-port DPP converter supporting up to 8 CPT charging modules.